On Tiktok, videos in which young people consume a white clay, called “kaolin”, are multiplying… but this trend is not without health risks!
- Kaolin, also called “white clay”, is used in the manufacture of porcelain, paint, cosmetics or pharmaceutical products.
- In traditional African medicine, this rock is “known for the more obvious therapeutic properties which are those of healing”.
- Eating it regularly can cause addiction, occlusive and sub-occlusive syndromes and anemia.
It was discovered in China. Kaolin, more commonly known as white clay, is a rock that is formed primarily from hydrated aluminum silicate. The latter has been used for millennia to make porcelain, paint or even paper. This white clay can also be found in cosmetics and pharmaceutical products. Recently, the name of this rock comes back more and more on tiktok. Many teenagers and young adults film themselves tasting this white block. Others even admit to suffering from a “stone addiction”. “I knew I was addicted from the moment I drove 1 hour to get some”, confided a user in a video published on the Chinese platform.
Eating kaolin, “a known practice in African traditional medicine”
According to Olivier Spatzierer, head of the gastroenterology unit at the American Hospital in Paris, this practice is not new, as it dates back to antiquity. “In West Africa in particular, it is a very well-known practice in traditional medicine for two reasons. First: a symbolic reason, i.e. to eat earth is to eat the energy of this land and, for example, women who have difficulty having children eat this land. But it is also known for the more obvious therapeutic properties which are those of healing, whether on the digestive level or on the the cutaneous planehe explained to France News.
Addiction, digestive disorder… the consequences of a high consumption of kaolin
Problem: this practice can pose a health hazard. Eating kaolin can cause addiction to this white clay. “Many people, who consume it, become addicted. (…) For Kaolin, it is difficult to say what the type of addiction is, if it is the product that will act directly on the neuromediators or if it is the fact of eating it, the pleasure of the taste which will finally lead to an addiction”, indicated, to France InfoVéronique Lambert, sonographer.
A high consumption of white clay can “lead to real plugs on the digestive plan and lead to occlusive and sub-occlusive syndromes, and finally, when it goes to line the entire wall of the digestive tract, you can have relatively deep anemias”detailed Olivier Spatzierer.
Véronique Lambert also pointed out that by ingesting this rock, it is possible, “not systematically”, of “to poison oneself, especially if it is regularly”. “The white clay consumed on social networks, we don’t know where it comes from, we don’t know where it was extracted and how it was processed, the only thing we know is that it is extracted from soils often naturally rich in heavy metals, such as lead, aluminum or even arsenic, (…) which, in general, have no place in the human body and go, when they penetrate in the body, replacing other metals and causing malfunctions in a whole host of cellular systems.”
